By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) It’s a strange experience to watch a film that does almost nothing for you only to go online afterwards to find out that it has a high score on Rotten Tomatoes. This is what happened to me with My Days of Mercy, a lesbian romance about the death… Read More VOD Review: My Days of Mercy
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The “cursed film” trope is one that applies to those movies that just can’t seem to catch a break, either due to problems on set or constantly shifting release dates. In the case of The New Mutants, we have both; a film that faced widely publicized production troubles,… Read More Review: The New Mutants
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) It’s been nearly thirty years since Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves appeared in a movie together as teenaged airheads Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan, two dimwitted but likeable dudes who were a blast to hang out with as they bumbled their ways through time, space,… Read More Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Canadian horror series Are You Afraid of the Dark?, which originally aired on YTV and Nickelodeon in the 1990s and also subsequently spawned a popular series of children’s books, has maintained a cult following over the years. The fact that the show gained such a dedicated fanbase makes… Read More DVD Review: Are You Afraid of the Dark?
By John Corrado One of my favourite movies of the year so far, Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island is being released on Blu-ray this week, after bypassing theatres and going straight to premium video on demand earlier this summer. The film stars Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson in the semi-autobiographical role… Read More Blu-ray Review: The King of Staten Island
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Written and directed by playwright Jessica Swale, making her feature directorial debut, Summerland is an enjoyably low-key character drama set in the English countryside during the height of World War II. The film centres around Alice Lamb (Gemma Arterton), a reclusive writer who lives alone in the country.… Read More VOD Review: Summerland
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) In writer/director Lisa Langseth’s film Euphoria, two sisters, Ines (Alicia Vikander) and Emilie (Eva Green), are travelling together through Europe. They have grown somewhat estranged since their rocky childhood, and are seeing each other for the first time in years. The purpose of their trip, which involves going… Read More VOD Review: Euphoria
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Indonesian superhero movie Gundala, which premiered as part of Midnight Madness at TIFF last year and is now available on Blu-ray, is an example of a film that deserves credit for its ambition and what it is able to pull off with a limited budget. Subtitled “Rise… Read More Blu-ray Review: Gundala
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) In the kung-fu comedy Enter the Fat Dragon, Donnie Yen disappears beneath padding and makeup for much of the film to take on the role of Fallon Zhu, a once fit and trim cop in Hong Kong who is put on desk duty and ends up gaining a… Read More Blu-ray Review: Enter the Fat Dragon
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) After exchanging some words at a traffic stop, a deranged man (Russell Crowe) makes it his mission to show a young mother named Rachel (Caren Pistorious) what “a bad day really is.” This is the premise behind Unhinged, a road rage thriller from director Derick Borte which is… Read More Movie Review: Unhinged
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The crime comedy Lucky Grandma, which had its Canadian premiere at the Reel Asian Film Festival in Toronto last fall and is being released digitally this week, opens with the main character, an elderly but feisty Chinese grandmother affectionately known as Nai Nai (Tsai Chin), visiting a fortune… Read More VOD Review: Lucky Grandma
By John Corrado One of the movies to bypass theatres and go straight to video on demand this summer was The High Note, director Nisha Ginatra’s mildly enjoyable musical dramedy about a pop diva (Tracee Ellis Ross) and her assistant (Dakota Johnson), who has ambitions of becoming a producer and starts secretly working with a… Read More Blu-ray Review: The High Note
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Kate Conklin (Gillian Jacobs), the main character in the new indie dramedy I Used to Go Here, is a writer in her mid-thirties who has just published her first novel, only to have her book tour cancelled by the publisher due to poor sales. With the man she… Read More VOD Review: I Used to Go Here
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Pitched somewhere between horror movie, psychological thriller, dark comedy, and hallucinatory fever dream, while refusing to settle for any single one of those things, She Dies Tomorrow functions as an intriguing look at anxiety and mass hysteria. Written and directed by Amy Seimetz, an actor who starred in… Read More VOD Review: She Dies Tomorrow
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) First published in 1911, British author Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved children’s novel The Secret Garden has been adapted for the big and small screen numerous times over the years, with the most famous adaptations being the movie versions that were released in 1949 and 1993. This story, which… Read More VOD Review: The Secret Garden
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Directed by Jay Baruchel, dipping his toes into the horror genre following his 2017 directorial debut Goon: Last of the Enforcers, Random Acts of Violence explores what happens when the work of an artist starts to inspire shocking acts of real life violence. Todd (Jesse Williams) is a… Read More VOD Review: Random Acts of Violence
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Written, directed, edited, produced by and starring comic actor Romany Malco, Tijuana Jackson: Purpose Over Prison is a fairly amusing mockumentary that follows an ex-convict’s attempts to go from prison inmate to life coach. Tijuana Jackson (Malco) is a fast-talking inmate at a Florida prison who has dreams… Read More VOD Review: Tijuana Jackson: Purpose Over Prison
By John Corrado The Canadian drama White Lie, which had its world premiere at TIFF last year, is being released digitally and on demand this week on a variety of platforms. The film, which is the best one yet from young Toronto directors Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis, follows a young woman named Katie Arneson… Read More VOD Release: White Lie
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Scooby-Doo, the classic cartoon dog from Hanna-Barbera, gets a shiny new CG makeover in Scoob!, a disappointingly bland animated adventure that features some appealing elements but mostly feels uninspired. The film, which bypassed theatres and went straight to video on demand a few months ago and is now… Read More Blu-ray Review: Scoob!
By John Corrado I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few days about how, despite the fact that Amy Heckerling directed two of the most iconic teen films of all time, she herself sadly isn’t really a household name in the same way that some other auteurs of adolescent cinema have become. The first… Read More Blu-ray Review: Clueless: 25th Anniversary Edition
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